


Looking for Something

by Madamot



Category: Charmed (TV 2018)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:40:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27840889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madamot/pseuds/Madamot
Summary: NIko Hamada is on the trail.Set after Season 1
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I think NIko Hamada is an interesting character and I think she could be reintegrated into the storyline.

Chapter 1

Niko Hamada had always thought of herself as a strong woman, but sometimes her job really tested her. This human trafficking case really showed her how low humans could go. Everyone had heard about the exotic animals that Customs had intercepted the previous month, but here before her eyes were people caged like animals. She felt fortunate that the missing girl she had been hired to find was just bruised not broken, as the paramedic put it. The others were not so lucky. She looked around her, there was big money behind this operation. 

The girl clung to her. “I'm going home now?” 

Niko smiled gently as she nodded. “Your parents are already on their way.” 

“You'll stay with me?”

“Until you see them.” Niko reassured her. 

The girl held unto Niko's hand the entire time, until they actually came. The mother knelt in front of her little girl and they were eye to eye. “Is it really you?” Something passed between them that Niko did not really understand, and then they embraced each other and cried in relief.

She wished she could do more for them, to punish these criminals, but that wasn't her job anymore. She wished that another girl she had been hired to find would have her own happy family reunion, but things do not always go as one hopes. She really needed some good to happen today. She thought she would be happy with Greta but, even without Mel in the picture, there were cracks she could not ignore. She wondered at times what could have been with Mel, but they were past that point. 

She did not expect her next case to lead her back to Mel. She was asked to investigate where Professor Harry Greenwood had disappeared to. Initially it looked like he may have spent the night with the Veras and had perished with them. The sister's neighbors saw him more often than his actual neighbors at his condo. It felt wrong and yet right to mourn for Mel and her family, but when Ray Vera died soon after, Niko began to suspect it was not an accident.

She did not have the resources of the police department at her disposal, but she also wasn't tied down with their rules and their hours. She knew Mel had some powerful enemies with being a witch, but maybe their family had been targeted for more mundane reasons. She decided to follow the money.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still a WIP but might as well share it as it is before canon blows this to bits.

Niko Hamada was too good an investigator to rely solely on intuition or on so called solid evidence. She used them in combination. Her intuition practically screamed that Ray Vera's death was no coincidence to the disappearance of Harry Greenwood. It was linked with Mel and her sisters, possibly even with the death of Marisol Vera. It was a little too convenient that both men had no family that they could call their own, and yet the closest thing to family they had where the girls. Macy Vaughn was recent addition to the family, at telenovela levels, who had accepted a job in Ann Arbor but never made it because of the house burning down. 

She got in contact with her friends in the police force and there seemed to be a rise of cases of single adults that disappeared in the last few weeks; different backgrounds, different areas, no traces. They were not immediately identified as missing because no immediate family member filed a missing persons report. They lived alone and worked at jobs that had relatively flexible hours, but they never missed a deadline until now. Their employers or friends filed the missing person report days or even weeks after last seeing them. 

Friends who were not being entirely honest. The simple questions of "How did you know each other?" and "How did you two met?" were meet with hesitation or a well rehearsed lie, but a lie nevertheless. The answers to "What was your relationship?" and "What makes you think he did not voluntarily leave?" seemed contradictory. "Nothing special." but they were also firmly convinced that "He would never just leave us." The magical connection was revealed when one of the friends used a spell on the officers to influence the investigation. Niko, having had previous magical encounters especially with Mel, played along to avoid suspicion, grateful that she kept the ring and it was able to protect her. She had to know what was happening and why?

She interviewed colleagues of Prof. Greenwood and some of the lifers and students at the college. While she did not learn anything new about the professor, she came to know intimate details of Mel's family she wasn't prepared for. The Vera's were once madly in love with each other but something changed, apparently Marisol had been unfaithful and Maggie was the result of the affair, but they covered it up and Ray even perpetuated the myth before deciding to walk away completely. Money seemed to be the reason he left and why he stayed away. She found traces that he was dealing in the illegal market and there had been a passing threat to his family. Marisol was informed but she decided against going back to her maiden name, even when Ray tried to convince her it would keep her and the girls safe. Niko had initially thought that the communications under the name Dexter Vaughn was an alias that Ray used to keep in touch with his wife but apparently this was the biological father of Maggie. She was having a hard time ranking which of the Vera secrets ranked the highest and how was the professor involved in all of this.

The professor that was almost invisible to the rest of the world, who seemed like he was not a real person. The only proof of his existence were the personal effects he had left in his office. His condo had his clothes and some textbooks, but nothing of personal significance or sentimental value. Anything of value to him, must have burned with the house. Never had a speeding ticket or any unpaid parking tickets. No red flags... but there were also no trace that he existed outside of Hilltowne. No passport. No credit cards. No estate. No heirs. No ancestors.

He does have a doppelganger.

**Author's Note:**

> Initially I was thinking the trail would lead to her catfish clients and then to the Shea Group and then she would reunite with Mel but I have not written the rest of the story and may decide to change as I go along, if I continue.


End file.
